Finding Health & Happiness: Life Lessons Everybody Learns Too Late In Life | Kris Carr

what I didn't understand especially with something like grief and loss was how it manifests in the body we can't amputate any of our emotions and expect to be whole one of the things that my dad said to me and he was as he was getting closer to dying he was dropping all the fatherly wisdom bombs and he said make your golden years now yeah wow to put them off because here I was I was retiring I'm in my early 70s I sold my business thinking now I'm going to spend more time with my family now I'm going to play golf with my brother now I'm going to do XYZ PDQ and here I am dying of terminal pancreatic cancer so you have to make your golden years now love every single day not tomorrow today what are you going to do today to make your life more golden and that changed everything you know and and I have to also say that even though his life was cut short the it wasn't about the quality of time it was are we sorry it wasn't about the quantity of time it was about the quality because I saw him make more Golden Days in four and a half years than I had seen in the 40 years that I knew him wow yeah so how do we begin there's no one specific path what we're not going to do is like create a blueprint we're not going to hack anything like none of that's going to happen but what we're going to do is hopefully Inspire steps to be free of grief right yeah that's not gonna happen yeah if I ever write that never buy another book of mine I'm just saying you know because it doesn't work like that and we're we're all so unique but if there's something that we're saying and becoming more emotionally literate and prioritizing joy and understanding that you don't have to hold it back it's actually too painful like picture waves stacking at some point they're going to overtake you so you're not more powerful than the ocean sorry honey you know what I mean like it's what but can we dive through it yes and so here in addition to the things that we've already talked about support you know for me that was going back to therapy and I've been in therapy on and off again for 30 years and sometimes you think like don't I Know It All by now do I really need to pay for this right right oh my gosh did I need to and then some I was just like take my money you know so getting that support and then understanding some of the things the lifestyle choices that you can make that will support you on this journey right so one of the things that I began to prioritize for different reasons like I used to prioritize exercise because I was like I like my ass to move up a little higher I mean I'm like in a bathing suit I like my thighs to be a little toner like you know what I mean or in the beginning with my diagnosis was like I should exercise because it's good for my immune system exercise became I need to exercise because it helps me change the channel yeah you know as we go through life uh we hit bumps in the road you know when you're a little kid and a baby born everything's fine you know but then stuff starts to kind of go sideways sometimes and and you whether it's a diagnosis of cancer which you had when you were a young woman or loss of family members or business disruptions and we've all experienced these moments in life that are just so challenging and we don't really have a map we don't really have a map what do we do how do we get through it how do we manage our grief how do we manage loss how do we not turn it inward into depression anxiety and self-destructive behaviors I mean it's it's really um you know it's it's really in life you can't get through life without getting beaten up and um how do you how do you kind of come through that on either side and be whole and happy and not shrink and shrivel and contract and live in fear and and I I see this in a lot of people like when you know they hit those bumps it's like I'm like they Retreat and they kind of withdraw but you kind of have a different view of all this and uh it's really beautiful in your new book I just want to sort of highlight it because it's it's such a beautiful book it's beautifully written it's it's deeply felt it's uh you know a tear jerker for sure uh and it's called I'm not a morning person and that's not Mor and ing it's m-o-u-r-n-i-n-e raving lost grief and the big messy emotions that happen when life falls apart so I'm just so excited to talk to you about this because it's not something we really talk about much this this recent moment you had a few years ago where your father was dying your business was having challenges you were about to hit your 20-year Milestone of living with stage four cancer and you were sort of at a Breaking Point and you're like in the parking lot falling in CVS parking lot tell us about that and what that moment was for you and how it you know catalyzed uh something good yeah thank you well you know it's called I'm not a morning person because it was the one emotion that I was really afraid to go near Mark and when I was newly diagnosed with cancer 20 years ago and as you said I've been living with stage four cancer for 20 years now I the first thing I did was run to food because food was something I could control and I desperately felt like I needed to control something because I felt so out of control yeah right and and what a wonderful place to begin your healing and wellness journey and you have taught me so much I've been so blessed to be your personal friend but also you know to devour all of your books and and follow your career and and always learn from you on your IDs and all the things that you do in the world it's true I'm like what do you have to say now I'm in you know but you said something to me a long time ago in a galaxy far away which you also teach the whole planet which is food is information yeah and what I where I started my my life and my career my Wellness life and my career was like being mindful of what you're eating and 20 years in I'm really focused on being mindful about what's eating you and right yeah it's not what you're eating it's what's eating you yeah I had a friend who lost 20 pounds as soon as he got out of a relationship that was toxic right well it that and that's the holistic lifestyle practice that we and we talk about and and sometimes it's it goes back to heal or heal thyself and so 20 years in I've done many incredible things and written books and had the privilege of lecturing with you and all these wonderful opportunities and yet I had a blind spot yeah and the blind spot was around grief because I thought that if I allowed myself to feel it I completely Fall Apart and everything would change and I would no longer have my [ __ ] together and um and as we know the opposite is true and the way out is through and it was through this perfect storm so to speak up all the things that you talked about coming together and by the way we were also in the middle of a global pandemic when all of this was happening right and I'm at CVS because my my mother you know my father's dying of terminal cancer yeah and I'm at CVS and my mom had asked me to pick up more insure and I didn't consciously have these thoughts right we can't choose our first thought but we can certainly work on our second one the first thought was how many do I get do I get a six-pack do I get a 12 pack do I get a case because I didn't know how long he had to live wow wow right and so those thoughts brought up this tsunami of grief and I remember dropping the insurer and like you know running out of CVS hoping nobody's seeing me of course they're seeing me I'm acting like a nut you know what I mean and I'm running to you're a crazy sexy kids right keyword yeah um so I'm running to the car and I get there and I completely fall apart it's all the stuff that I had been holding back and it wasn't just the stuff of what was happening recently Because my brilliant therapist said something to me that's in the I use in the book A Lot which is when the grief train pulls into the station it brings all the cars yeah it's it's like it's like all the all the stuff that's been backing up that you haven't actually faced or looked at in your life around grief or loss or pain very right that was it and and it's all energy and if we can think of it that way we maybe we can have some more curiosity around it um as opposed to perpetuating the stigma of it and so she says this and and so it's all coming and then I allow myself to just totally fall apart I mean it's a mascara Festival right it's just like there and um and I felt better and it was a moment like when the medicine kicks in and I was like if this feels better even just a little bit why have I been so hell-bent on avoiding it and if I stopped avoiding it what could it teach me and then that was the moment where I was like I'm gonna learn about grief um wow yeah it's uh it's something that that I I know is is uncomfortable and you know humans tend to avoid pain and seek pleasure right and so I I really relate to what you're saying and I actually it was it was probably around the same time the same thing happened to me I a covet happened I had back surgery that was so unexpected for a disc thing that was just debilitating with bad complications and my marriage ended uh sort of relatively abruptly in the middle of all that and I just I was in this place of total loss and I and I I would literally have to kind of just sit in the experience of being broken you know am I broken back my broken heart and I you know I lost my mother recently before that I lost my father my sister a number of years before and I kind of had just buried it all man and because uh in fact you know covid stopped everything I actually had the time to sit with it all and I I really had to feel and I remember would be meditating and I would literally just start crying as I was meditating and I just turned all these feelings coming up and so I think for so many of us we're just we just not um familiar with how to navigate that and navigate loss and how to heal from those ruptures you call those things you call ruptures right the things like divorce accidents miscarriage you know back surgery cancer uh you know death um so how do how do we begin to start to heal these these wounds how do we how do we kind of actually kind of learn from them in a way that actually allows us to kind of get a road map for living fully because because what you describe is what I felt when you actually go through it on the other side is light right if you bury it on the other side is often Darkness it it doesn't go away it eats at you right it's like eating you you said and it causes illness it causes grief I mean it causes anxiety depression and anger and all these other things that kind of come out sideways so how do we how do we sort of we can detend those wounds and how do we how do we kind of get a road map for like you say fully living and thriving in the next chapter after that yeah that's a great question and and we'll talk about I know we will get into some practical tools that we can use but I think taking that big step back it's first and foremost for me and I'm not a grief expert although you know when I'm on to something I'm like I'm gonna learn everything I can about it operations um but what I learned through the process of going through this first and foremost and also writing my book so a lot of research um was to take that big step back first we have to normalize the experience and um you know we can't amputate any of our emotions and expect to be whole and we live we're domesticated in a grief phobic messy emotions Versus Society so it's normal that we're walking around I have a chapter called awkward times awkward people yeah we'll get to that yeah it's normal that we're walking around clueless many of us and so we want to give ourselves Grace and forgiveness because you know we haven't been given as you said road maps for how to navigate storms of this magnitude um so I would say the first step is just to get clear that this is normal and if we go back to your Brilliance of food is information and we apply that Brilliance to emotions or information then we can start to get curious about them and I was talking to a doctor the other day and what came to me was what if we could create like the anatomy of emotions and I was thinking about when I was first diagnosed and I have tumors in my liver and both of my lungs if I were to say to you a physician I don't like my liver and I would like to it's not attractive it's clearly um not functioning properly it's not like the other livers on the playground you know who obviously got better educations than my liver and I would like you to remove it because it's just Unbecoming as my grandmother would say about an emotion she thought a lady shouldn't partake in you would say Chris Carr are you out of your rocker like you need your liver your liver's incredible your liver does over 400 and or more I don't know you know things for you and maybe if you learn a little bit more about your liver you will like be in awe of that organ and maybe if you learned a little bit more about your liver you might actually get super inspired to take care of it as opposed to judging it um so big metaphor that we can apply to our emotions if they're information what are they here to teach us and if we can get curious about those emotions and put on like our little Wellness detective hats that we put on when we're sick we put on our Wellness detective hats and we get curious about our emotions then we're not going to judge them as much we'll forgive ourselves when we mess up because we will and we'll be like oh you said it so beautifully there's ways for me to tend to these emotions so that I can feel better yeah and I think that's the first step is like first and foremost like applying that mindset and then allowing it to take you through the places that it will take you yeah you know so fascinating Chris because you know we don't really have any education in our navigating our internal emotional psychological spiritual worlds right I was like it's like Reading Writing arithmetic but like being a human no we have no idea about how to do that right I don't know and I I just came back from India and I went to the the the the see the Dilemma in dharamsala India and there was a Tibetan monk a geshe which is like a PhD you know Monk and he he saw that there were these kids that were living you know on the street and that were begging and lived in slums and were just it was just the worst and he decided he wanted to do something about it and give them a place to live and give him food and give them some nutrition and they started that and they just kind of snowballed into building this whole school and now he has this whole massive complex called Tong Len which is essentially as a Buddhist Meditation practice of of breathing in the suffering of the world and breathing out healing it's it's a very powerful practice but anyway the school is is teaching these kids social emotional ethical learning and it's not it's not religious it's not Buddhist and it's it's secular it's it's really secular ethics he calls it secular emotional uh learning and I went to this school and there were these kids literally that were from and I visited the slums it was really so heartbreaking to see how these I mean this it was the worst of the worst I've ever seen in my life and and these kids came from this place but in the school they were they were now educated and they were talking about compassion and their emotions and they literally had instead of like you know math on the wall they had here's all your emotions here's how you navigate them here's how you relate to people here's how you be kind here's what compassion is here's how you have disagreements here's what dialectical conversations are that allow you to kind of get to the truth and you know I was like I was like what and I and these kids were just so amazing and so aware of the need to kind of be a good human and it's not about Christian or Buddhist or Jewish or Muslim it's just about how do we human better right and and uh and we don't have that map and so what you're talking about is starting to kind of learn and then when your book uh you know I'm not a morning person is about is about how to sort of learn to confront and to navigate things that are unpleasant or difficult um and understand our own internal landscape and how do we how do we dance with that and how do we play with that and how do we actually use the you know the rough bits of life to actually come out the other side better right and can you talk about that a little bit yeah first and foremost I want to go to that school it's amazing Chris you have no idea holy cow that's so beautiful compassion I'm like compassion I can understand one of those I mean like can you imagine if we learned these things earlier in life like usually like I learned about compassion because I was such a jerk to myself and I couldn't I was so uncomfortable in my skin that I started to learn I went to a monastery I was like you gotta check yourself in this is too much like you're not this is not a weekend pillow experience for you girl you know and I know so uh yeah that's just breathtaking I think um we humans limit ourselves by only allowing ourselves to believe that a certain spectrum of emotions are tolerable and um you know emotions that will will be supported in society and I think it does us a great disservice it's like saying here's a pack of Crayola crayons but you can only use brown and blue and red that's it and you have all these other crayons you're like but if I can use all of them it's like I I love that you said that we're all going to go through it um and I think in our society especially as we get sucked deeper and deeper into social media and Technology we think well everybody else has a rainbow I want a rainbow of a life right but we can't have the rainbow and say but no rain right oh right yeah no rain thank you bad brain bad rainbow good like well how are we gonna so you know going back to this idea of the big emotions one of the things that I didn't realize is that I mean I knew this to some on some level but not until I really had to go decided to say yes to this adventure let's say so saying yes to the adventure of exploring the harder parts of my life and myself my emotions I realized that there the big emotions come with something like grief so when when I was in the storm of my grief and cut really trying to avoid it as best as I could um what would also come forward was past trauma what would also come forward was rage what would what also came forward was shame and so you know it's like it's coming forward so you can either continue to smush it down but there's a there's also emotional physics yeah emotional physics wow what a concept all right I just came up with that recently I was like Mark's gonna love this well you know we think about emotional Anatomy that's one but emotional physics is like if it doesn't come out one way it's energy it's going to come out another um and and coming out another could be you know in my past life um it could come out through drugs it would come out through heavy drinking it would come out through toxic relationships it would come out through either explosions or implosions and none of that would make me feel happy healthier or more vibrant and so that I said well what choice do you have like you can continue down this path or you can take another path and the other path actually in some ways it seems harder until you actually surrender to it and through that surrender saying like all parts of me are welcome back um and I I love you and I'm gonna sit with you and we're going to figure this out and we're not going to do it by ourselves right so help just like I would say you're the CEO of your life and you of your well-being and you want to build a medical team and you're gonna hire and you're gonna interview and you're gonna fire and you're going to find your second in command and you don't have to know it all they do but you have to know enough to know when they suck so so basically your first part of your journey was uh creating you know say save my ass Technologies in yes sir the second part is uh save my heart technology say my heart save my mind Technologies and saying okay who's on my team here because these are places that are scary and I want to go I want to navigate them with support yeah yeah you know a few years ago I I am you know as a consequence of all this loss and breakdown and you know physical emotional challenges that I was I was in um I decided to really go deep like as opposed to turning away from it which I normally would do and overworking and writing 19 books and changing the world and doing being Mark Hyman I decided to like stop like just pull the plug and and it was covered so it was kind of easier to like scale down and just really go into the the grit of the emotions and the feeling and so much stuff came up and I I realized that you know I really had never dealt with my my childhood I just had like oh just a fresh Moon you know just kind of move on and you know it's okay it was like not that bad you know I didn't I know I wasn't you know beaten with hooks and locked in closets and so what could be that um but I realized that you know there was a lot of things that happened in my childhood with the rageaholic father incest with my sister my mother using me as her therapist because she was in a bad second marriage and you know just just I never got to be a really a child and to actually have a happy childhood and and there was so much grief around that so much loss so much taken away and I remember Lily just like actually having to go into that and it it was almost like physiological you know type of emotional physics like it was physiological you talked about experience in the CVS parking lot where you actually felt the relief after that and for me it was like something just got unlocked and in all this this fatigue and stress and you know just kind of wait um kind of kind of dislodged and it was like all of a sudden it was it was like you know a thunderstorm coming it's dark and the clouds are banging and the Thunder and the lightning and then it just like goes away it's like fresh and clear and bright and like you know magical and it it's kind of felt like that it was like weird to kind of have so much pain and and kind of feel all of it and and understand what happened to me and then get to the other side of it feel that grief and loss and like kind of move through it and have this almost ecstatic experience on the other side it was a little surprising but I was so happy it ended up like that but it's kind of what you're talking about it's like the areas where we're unhappy or depressed and I think I kind of want to dive into this next part where you talk about your book this is really this epidemic we're facing of anxiety and depression you know the disease is a despair the suicide that the drug addiction alcoholism we were all living in this sort of state of heightened alertness and stress and and it really causes huge damage to our bodies you know to our immune system to our hormones our adrenals our resilience and you know uh and we don't really have a map for how to navigate out of that app how do we how do we sort of understand these emotions of fear and anxiety and depression things that are so rampant how do we kind of learn what they have to teach us and use that as a way to kind of move through this this sort of messy emotions that can get us to the other side yeah I love that you want to go there in a second but I love that you brought up fatigue because what I didn't understand especially with something like grief and loss was how it manifests in the body so I didn't understand the connection between my brain fog and grief I didn't connect understand the connection between my extreme fatigue and my lack of appetite and grief and just even understanding some of that again like when we learn the landscape a little bit more you can say oh this is grief this is actually normal but I I'm the first one's gonna be like what what how do I have to change my diet let me get a blood test what are the next 77 supplements I need to take like it's got to be my thyroid call Mark Mark I need to get a thyroid check you know and maybe that's true but I think those are the obvious places to go the what we're talking about are the less obvious places to go that have a very interconnected impactful impact so to speak and so like for example fear and anxiety you know if we take every chapter in the book handles a different emotion or experience that you may face when the rug gets pulled out from under you they're not all of them they're the ones that I included in the book that I can speak to firsthand [Music] um so with fear and anxiety I used to think Mark that I was a very fearful person um and maybe that's not something I projected on the outside but it's what I felt on the inside um certainly coming from my own childhood wounds and my own the traumatic impact of being diagnosed at 31 and and living with cancer for 20 years right so I was very hyper Vigilant 50 are you I'm 52. come on I just turned 50. yes it's true it's true yeah um well I'm grateful for it though that's for sure because what's the alternative [Music] [Laughter] um better on this side of the grass for the moment yes I'm gonna hold off on the dirt nap but you gotta have a sense of humor when you talk about this stuff right because it's it's tough stuff so we have to bring levity and lightness to it um but uh anyway so I I thought I was a very fearful person because I'm I tend to be more hyper Vigilant so I like to control and where does that come from that comes from my own past traumatic experiences in childhood and you know and I am adopted so my my biological father uh left when I was conceived and so my chosen father Ken who raised me from nine on um was a huge part of healing of participating in healing in that wound is it completely healed no not all wounds completely heal right and that's what what we learned but I think what can happen is is that all these beautiful experiences and um all this incredible development builds around that wound like Joy happens around that wound married my marriage happened around that wound you know like my friendship with you like the wounds still exists but I have so many wonderful other things that are also true and again we live in this sort of like black and white Society where it's either one or the other and I think that's the probably the biggest thing that holds us back and so just going back to the idea of fear and anxiety fear is actually kind of simple it comes on in an instant it has a beginning middle and end both of these emotions are designed from an evolutionary perspective to keep us safe that's it so we don't need to judge them we can actually thank them like thank you fear because it made me get up and go when the lion was chasing me thank you fear when a deer jumps in front of my car and I swear really quickly and then you know the stressful was no flooding through my body and then I'm gonna have a hangover because it takes a while for me to return to some sort of homeostasis after that thank you fear anxiety on the other hand is like the fear of what could happen in the future what may or may not happen and so a lot of us who maybe think we're fearful people we might be more anxious people and we can say okay let me learn more about the anatomy of anxiety am I finding myself ruminating in this moment am I talking to my friend Mark but really I'm someplace else and in that someplace else I'm telling myself a effed up story about what's going to happen after this call because I didn't send that email on time right and all these other things that we're actually living some sort of chaotic Horror Story dream and we're not actually in the present with our emotions with our well-being with our relationships and so even just being able to diagnose some of that and say wait a minute I'm going to catch myself in this moment I might even give that story that I'm telling myself a funny name just to like make me giggle yeah and then to you know all of the wonderful things that you could teach us it's like what are some of the tools to bring me back to this moment here and now that can also Soothe My nervous system and bring my brain back online because when we're in those places our brains are offline well you know a lot of us try to go around the feelings right instead of going through them so the only way out is through right the only way out is through the the facing directly and feeling the the reality of whatever is happening to you and and actually having a way to metabolize it so that doesn't actually end up causing illness and I think you know as a physician to me you know this is one of the sort of big unexpressed things in medicine and you know we kind of give sort of a nod to stress being a factor but you know it's not just the stress of you know living in the modern world it's not just the stress of work and kids and responsibilities it's all this unmetabolized emotion and unprocessed experiences and feelings and loss and and um you know when I look at my own life I'm like you know I've I've actually gone through you know horrible first marriage the alcoholic single father you know back surgery at 32 chronic fatigue at 36 you know mercury poisoning second marriage I mean just one thing after the other for so long and you know I could kind of easily see myself being kind of shrunken and depressed and disabled and and you know by literally just leaning into the experience of the pain of life um I'm not running away from it but actually and like you said working with your team of you know savior ass Technologies team or save your mind and heart team like save our soul right it's really about saving our souls and and getting free so we we can actually have an authentic direct experience of life that's unmediated by the the kind of unresolved unexpressed unfelt unprocessed emotions and what's so beautiful about um I'm not a morning person in your book is that it sort of normalizes this and it and it actually helps us to kind of think of practical ways that we can start to to do this and through your own stories and and your own experiences you've been able to actually get to the other side right so a lot of us you know have this and and I'm sure many people listening to them well that sounds good but like what the heck do I do like how do I how do I get to the other side how do I you know I've had all this pain all this suffering all this loss all this challenge in my life and we all do how do I how do I find my way and can you kind of talk about some practical ways that people can start to sort of move through this instead of having to sublimate it with drugs or sex or food or depression or anxiety or whatever the heck we do Netflix binge that's my that's my drug um it's better than some of the other things I used to do oh well I want to just start by saying that you I know um you know we've been friends for so long so I have been a part of your life during some of these chapters and one of the things that I love about you and I imagine that your followers will instantly realize when I say this is you have a light filled energy you have an energy that exudes Joy at the cellular level thank you Chris you do you are so filled with light and I think that's one of the reasons why so many millions of people gravitate towards you and so I think you're an example of yes a lot of trials and tribulations can happen in your life and you can navigate them and they can grow you deeper and you can be super successful and you can really still love life um yeah and so just you even being here shows me that that's possible for me too and another thing about you which is so fun is you prioritize Joy yeah I do you do and and I'd say that Joy is one of the most underrated medicines that we could prescribe for ourselves because they it helps us at the physiological level you could tell about all those things um it helps our our mental well-being our physical well-being our immune system and the last thing sometimes we think that we even deserve like we would feel guilty if we were to prioritize Joy is when we're going through a tough time especially with let's say we're a caregiver and we're helping with Ender life care for a family member or partner like you were with your dad you could say oh gosh I feel so guilty to take this moment from myself and prioritize a little Joy that's the opposite um behavior that you you we want to implore you not to do that because for me it doesn't have to be this big huge thing like I'm not you know if I don't go to Great Adventure it's not going to be joyful enough you know it's like no that's not what it is for me it could be I'm feeding my hummingbirds I have three feeders I have this naughty little bully male hummingbird that will chase all the ladies around and I have to like go out there and like keep the peace with the gals and and the little bully and they know me and they come chirping chirping chirping around my head and it is just a moment of sheer joy for me um so I know I've gone on and on and on and we can come back to other things but I I realize it's probably time for me to pass the microphone back to you no no this is so great I mean I think I think you know you're right everybody has to find their own path to navigate toward the the experience the feeling the processing the metabolizing of challenging and difficult emotions that that come up um in the course of going through the trials and tribulations of life and you know I you know I think many people find you know life coaches or therapy or workshops or just a good friend you know yes uh who you know can really just deeply help you see what you can't see um or there's programs like the Hoffman process which is something that you know is is uh kind of like uh I think emotional intensive care it's like the ICU for you know like uh where you know you can let all the all the fluids out you know and all the emotions out out and and and actually face things that and you can't uh easily do on your own so I I think it's it's an important conversation Chris because bringing this forward for people helping them to kind of normalize it to understand that we are uh you know we are not going to get free until we understand like you said our emotional physics until we understand the things that are you know turning in on us so if you are experiencing depression if you are experiencing anxiety if you are experiencing things like food addiction or alcoholism or drug abuse or any of these things they're they're all ways that we turn against ourselves instead of actually meeting the feelings and it's so hard to meet those feelings that we don't have we don't have the constructs or the systems or the structures in place in our society to do this easily and it's it's actually gets its own machines worse than ever like we see you know and I and I like I said I just got back from from being in in Nepal and India and you know it was a Buddhist culture there in in some of these places and they have a very different frame of life and in in even the most challenging situations there's joy and there's there's a meaning of life quite differently and I think because they taught that they they do get taught about these Concepts as part of a part of their culture and we don't so you know in the book Chris you do have sort of a little bit of a road map where you talk about some of the the five pillars of Wellness which really help us to kind of deal with with the emotional piece too it's it's you know I I'm glad you talked about you know you know your your mind and your thoughts being so important how to actually influence everything else but I I'd love you to sort of talk about these five areas that you frame in the book around our well-being and and what the practices are like you know what the pillars and the practices so you know as you were saying in when we're going through difficult times this is a perfect time to double down on our self-care um and you probably know Dr Judd Dr Judd Brewer um he he wrote he has a great book about anxiety and he talks about how it can actually be something that's habitual you know like every habit has a a trigger a behavior and a reward um or a result you know because not all rewards are actually rewarding so let's say we're really struggling and so when we're struggling we want to like drink a glass of wine every night because it's going to help us like I don't know just sell soothe for a minute in in some way um but we know that the result of that night after night after night or you know multiple glasses of wine or whatever it is I'm just giving that example actually starts to maybe impact our our mental health we start to feel more depressed we're dealing with brain fog and all these types of things and so it's like I think that the the tools that we sometimes reach for that are less productive they're good intentions gone wrong right you're not doing it because you're weak you're doing it because you're looking for help right but sometimes we're looking for help in places that don't actually provide the help that we need and so going through difficult times I think that's when we can double down on our self-care but in a different way so when we talk about the pillars it's just my way of distilling the I would say the principles of a healthy lifestyle practice which is about being mindful about optimizing what you're eating what you're drinking what you're thinking and how you're resting and renewing yeah and you know that kind of rests on a strong Foundation of stress reduction those things actually help to reduce inflammation and um but the key word isn't optimized the key word is mindful and I think what can happen is we get really hard on ourselves we want to get it right and we want to do it perfect and if we don't do it perfect we think we're failing in our healthy lifestyle practices and I would say you know what what you did when the Chisel was hitting the fan for yourself is like so so so essential it's like we gotta slow it all down you know what can we handle at this moment we are not going to be at full capacity nor should we expect ourselves to and so what what can we prune what needs to be let go of what how can we make more time and space for our own processing and healing and self-care especially if we're caregivers because then we're already stretched then right and so I like to say first and foremost is like lower the bar yeah all over the bar Lower the bar good enough is good enough yeah like expect less from yourself is what you're saying which is certain opposite of our culture right a little bit because look when we expect so much of ourselves like let's let's just break it down like let's make it really obvious so the pillars like if I'm at Optimum like I'm I'm working the pillars like the lifestyle might look a little different but let's say I'm going through a divorce or let's say I'm going through my own diagnosis or a loss of a loved one I've just lost my job it shocked me my boss kicked me in the teeth and fired me when for no reason let's say that just happened [Music] I don't feel like eating or I feel like eating the whole planet you know it's like one of the and so for me it's going to be like I don't feel like eating and so what am I gonna do well I gotta eat I might be going for the three pints like chunky monkey you want some chunky monkey right so like I'm gonna say well you know what I don't have the energy I'm completely I'm so sad I can't believe how sad I am I'm gonna make myself a smoothie because that takes very little time it's got the good fats and healthy proteins and you know all the good stuff your people know I don't even have to say but that is a commitment I'm gonna make to myself I am going to drink water that is a commitment I'm going to make to myself that's what I'm saying about lowering the bar you know you might open your your pantry and see your 77 bottles of supplements and say f u I'm not I can't for whatever reason at that moment you're like I can't you know but what are the like three things in there you probably should be taking right now and you'll cut talk to Mark he'll tell you but like lower the bar because if it's so high you'll probably do nothing and if you do nothing you're going to feel worse so it might not be that you're going to go to the gym and do all of the big things that you usually do with your trainer but like for me if that's you for me it's like every single day as my grandmother Say by hook or crook I'm gonna take my walk after work it's a 30 minute walk I'm not doing it to lift my ass to the sky I'm doing it to release my day and get some movement yeah um and so what I'm I'm talking about is practical Wellness that strengthens these the this lifestyle medicine that you so beautifully teach us about yeah I think it's true and I think you know um what I've learned uh as a physician and as a human being and and and and and I I heard Tony Robbins talk about this uh once and it was it was such a powerful concept which is learn how to change your state yes right learn how to change your state whether it's like you know yelling and screaming jumping up and down a hundred times going for a run jumping in the cold River you know standing on your head whatever it is there are ways to change your state and it's it's it is emotional physics and so I've learned that that I actually have a channel that I can get to it's a different Channel by by actually doing some simple practices that access my kind of emotional realm and help to resolve some of the sort of emotional distress by a kind of physical means right so I I've learned all these practices and I'm talking to write about them but maybe it's like a cold shower you know like in the morning it was like step in an ice cold shower that'll change your state right yes it will very much going to sauna or go for a run or do 10 push-ups or you know do some kind of you know process where you're actually changing your physiological State and uh and it's it's a it's a it's an incredible medicine um because it discharges a lot of the stress because what we're talking about is whether it's grief or whether it's in Anger whether it's anxiety depression these are all states of stress and so it's a physiological process and as a doctor I deeply understand what the physiology of stress is yeah but as a human being like I can understand it and it's still gonna you know mess me up unless I actually learn the tools and the techniques whether it's having my morning smoothie right yeah so for me it's like if I'm in a bad way and then when I was when I was going through the divorce and the back surgery and I've broken heart and my life kind of falling apart and you know having just lost my most all my family close family members my nuclear family I I actually set myself up where I would you know do these practices no matter how crappy I felt or how depressed I was or how much grief I was experiencing I was like okay I'm gonna wake up and I'm gonna journal for a half an hour just like get out everything and then I'm gonna kind of work out or go for a bike ride or jump in the ocean or you know I had a set of practices that I would do and I'm going to have my smoothie and I'm gonna eat these vegetables and you know it kind of worked and I didn't mean I wouldn't sit and meditate and cry but I I was actually able to move through it and and it helped me not to kind of get ossified in the state and I think our emotions tend to get ossified and unless we kind of learn how to you know break them up and change the state we're in and this is really why I think your book is so important it helps us to see the the greater context of it's hey it's okay that Things Fall Apart stuff happens to all of us but what but how do we actually navigate that and how do we use some simple practices and tools to actually fix it it's not that it's not that hard it's like what you're eating it's what you're drinking it's what you're thinking it's how you're resting how you're renewing all the things you talk about the pillars in your book and I I think you know those simple practical things are not overwhelming they're really accessible to all of us and you know it's it's like a it's kind of like the medicine that we're missing right i i i as a doctor you know I it's hard to treat diseases of Despair right you we've got to find a different way and I mean maybe if we all went to that tunneling School in India and learned social emotional ethical learning you know like we'd be okay you know but we're not we have to kind of you know go back to school really and and your book is in a way a curriculum for us to kind of relearn how to be in relationship with our feelings our emotions our our hardest you know most difficult things that we have to face in life thank you for that you just said so many wonderful things and you know these are the prac this is like the work boots of how to get how to get moving when you don't want to be moving um it's and and I'll I'll just take a step back real quick and say you know sometimes it just begins with courageous acknowledgment of saying this is where I am right now and that's why the first step of that emotional literacy is so helpful so that you can understand where you are and then actually say it because you know when we think about diseases of Despair we think about loneliness we can be in community and still feel lonely why because we're actually not sharing the truth of what we're actually experiencing and we do share the truth of what we're experiencing it gives permission for somebody else in our community to say well you know what I'm very sad too and that creates that deeper Bond because we do need each other it's very hard to Lone Wolf difficult times and yet when we're in difficult times what do we do we tend to withdraw and and so I'd say just even being able to here's an example I was in a a meeting the other day and somebody asked me how I was doing and I said I'm sad not something you say in a meeting and I'm not saying that you should I'm not giving you like go go tell you yes you're sad you know I mean like but I'm in a meeting and I said I am sad that was such a huge win because what I was doing is saying you're asking me how I am and instead of saying I'm fine everything's great great it's like I'm sad yeah and and What would life look like if we were actually more honest with each other what would life look like if the next time you cried in front of somebody that you cared for or maybe some you know colleagues or friends or people that you don't even really deeply know but for whatever reason you were moved in that moment and you cried and you didn't say I'm sorry um we just said Thank You For You Know holding space for this moment first of all everybody would be like whoa what kind of stuff does she take that's amazing like that was Brave it was Brave what was so brave about it it was just being with the truth of the feeling and for you it could be just starting with naming it what am I feeling right now like what would it be like to start your day and write this question for yourself how am I hmm and then and then like literally free form and let yourself actually know how you are that's where we're gonna start before we even put the work boots on if you just developing that relationship of how am I well I'm I'm this and I'm that and oh you know it's just even getting in touch with those emotions because we can give you lots of tools there's box breathing there's mirror work there's so many I write about a lot of the Practical things in the book and that's not box breathing isn't like being in a box and breathing no I didn't even know it's a technique and holding it breathing out very good you don't need that mess in the comments yeah [Music] but like let's make it let's simplify it all and start with the truth of where we are yeah yeah it's beautiful um you also in the book you you shared you know after your father died you took a beautiful walk with your mom um on the beach um and and that that was you know really profound for you and then it was um you know uh a moment um that was you know on Valentine's Day it was your 18th year cancer bursary you call it it was a few days after your dad died and um um you know tell us about the walk and what happened and you kind of had some kind of message from your dad and and I think that would be very meaningful to share yeah you know I have to say I have a very feral fluid fickle relationship to Faith um and I like you know alliteration obviously um I I've had I think like everything I question life very rigorously and um and I was going through a time where I was really questioning if there was anything beyond this even though I know that energy doesn't die it transforms and I believe that's the same with love you know but I can get very cerebral very quickly um and I we were going for a walk on the beach we're both so soaked in grief we're in shock really um and we had an incredible experience through his passing and being present with him and I learned so much from the hospice nurses and doctors and like I'm no longer at the place of like really being afraid of my own death as as a result of going through this which was what a gift but we're walking and I'm I'm like Dad if you're there I could really use a sign you know and left a little further out and there's nobody on the beach we see I see these two long stem roses standing at attention and he would have sent me red roses for Valentine's Day because you often did there's one for me and it was one for my mom oh wow and the crazy part was is that beforehand my husband had gotten me roses but he was like I don't know what to do should I get your mom roses is that going to be weird is that going to remind her of her loss I said look if you're so stuck on the Roses they're not yours to give hmm and so here we are and I was like Mom it's in whether I don't know again I don't know how it works and I'm very open to the mystery and I'm so excited you know I think we'll really know when we know um but it was it just filled my heart with hope and possibility and we got back to the car and I we were in the parking lot and I could see this little apartment complex and there was a man getting ready to watch a movie you know he's like in his Lazy Boy big screen TV that I can see and I see Netflix come on and the title card of the movie that is about to start watching is called surviving death and I'm like this signs are coming Fast and Furious all right dad here's the situation you know and so I think the point is what I've what I've done since then is really it's given me an opportunity to not only strengthen the faith of my knowing but to build to build a new relationship with the people that I love who are no longer here and so that relationship continues and making you can even say like I'm gonna make my life a treasure hunt I'm going to look for signs signs that I'm in a loving Universe signs that you know I'm still in relationship with people who have passed that are still a big part of my heart and when you start to make your life a treasure hunt you'd be surprised how many Treasures you see and so that was a big aha for me as was the making your golden years now and then saying okay well how am I going to do that it's not just about the wonderful people I want to have in my life or the experiences I want to have but it's also about what kind of nose am I gonna say now what like what's real what what is the perspective this has given me and how do I embrace Fully Alive living and really live more in alignment with who I am so that I can continue to share the the truth of that and also Blossom deeper into that person and that means that there's some things that probably will fall apart like sometimes when Things Fall Apart there's a domino effect because there needs to be yeah you know it's like Leonard Cohen right it's like you know the crack is where the light gets in right yeah um things are cracked open in our life it's it's often the the most juicy moments it's the moments of of healing of repair of learning of discovery of kind of kind of getting to the next Quantum level of our own emotional spiritual Evolution and it's like it's hard it's not fun it's often it's painful but but it also is kind of Juicy it's like we kind of push away the things that are uncomfortable right we we avoid pain and we see pleasure as just human nature right but but actually it undermines our ability to actually feel the pleasure it's it's kind of paradoxical as we've buried the pain and the grief and the loss and the whatever we're feeling and we don't go into it it actually causes more pain it's it's kind of his weird Paradox and actually going through it and meeting it and facing it and experiencing it and breathing through it um and getting the help like as you you know like I said we you know you said it very well you can't you know can't do this on your own you need that team right uh and and that's you know it's a hard thing for people to kind of get in this life because we all want to sort of not feel those feelings but but actually your book is an invitation to think about it differently it's invitation to meet those feelings to to go through the grief to go through the loss to face it all and actually to kind of emerge through it free it's like I I I it's like like you sort of said it like when you were in the parking lot and you had this moment and afterwards there was something that felt light or free in you you know I was talking to a friend last night in my men's group with men's group of you know friends we've been have for 40 years you know it's like so we know each other really well and you know he's talking about you know the sense of you know when his mother died and how you know um the The Undertakers came to take her away and the grief he felt and the you know the sobbing and afterwards how how much lighter he felt and how much Freer he felt and I think it's true for all of us like if we go into it on the other side is it's like it's like climbing a mountain you know it's like so hard to get to the top and then you're like oh and then it's like and then it's kind of gets easy on the way down so I think you've climbed a lot of mountains in your life Chris you know you climb the mountain of your own cancer thriving which is amazing it's like 20 years uh and I've been with you a lot through that journey and um and you know the lawsuit shared you know about your dad and other things that we've all gone through um it's such a gift you know you're you're um you're being in the planet is a real gift your book is a gift um and I wonder if you have any you know final thoughts or or words you want to share with them with our our audience yeah first thanks for having me this is such a highlight for me to be with my dear friend and Mentor mark um I would say just give yourself Grace and as much as possible when you allow yourself to become more Curious to explore the the conversation that we're having today is to also make sure that you are very compassionate with yourself um but as we've been talking about this is the path right it's so easy to say you know we we are in the personal development World in many ways and you know I see the trends where people are talking about the creating their best life and manifesting and all these wonderful things like who doesn't want that we want to attract the abundance into our life and so on I do but I think that this is the groundwork because sometimes when we're doing that work or we're we're searching desperately for ways to do that it's kind of like putting lip gloss on a problem right the problem's still there and so by being courageous enough to say I'm gonna go to some of these deeper places it's almost like we unlock the potential for the lives that we want to live and you you keep mentioning the beautiful word freedom I mean that's just such a core desire of mine and of each and every one of us and we may never be completely free of the pain and that's normal too it's not a failure but I believe that we can be free of the fear of the pain and the barrier it creates to fully Alive living if you love that last video You're Gonna Love the next one check it out here and I think it goes to the fact that we dismiss symptoms that are I mean they're seemingly vague right fatigue I mean I'm tired I'm a little depressed I'm not functioning sex my Skin's a little dry my hair is thinning right right

Channel: Mark Hyman, MD

Views: 9,837

Keywords: Mark Hyman, Mark Hyman interview, Mark Hyman live longer, Mark Hyman diet, how to live longer, how to age in reverse, nutrition tips, healthy foods, health tips, health theory, fasting tips, how to never get sick again, prevent disease, self help, self improvement, self development, personal development, inspiration, motivation

Id: Mopoac5n3Io

Length: 63min 37sec (3817 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 04 2023